Indian Museum

In the Asia Pacific region, Indian Museum is the earliest and largest multipurpose museum.

The history of the Indian Museum started in the 18th century when Sir William Jones devoted his life to the service of Indians and founded the Asiatic Society in 1784. Asiatic Society was working to preserve and develop the art and culture pertaining to socio-cultural activities. The members of the Asiatic Society conceived the idea of establishing a museum in 1796. They wanted to preserve nature-created and human-created objects.

The idea came into form with finding a place to establish a museum building in at the corner of park street granted by the government in 1808. Six years later, Nathaniel Wallich, a Danish botanist wrote a letter to the Asiatic Society where he shared his wish to be an honorary curator of the museum and he also wanted to supply duplicates from his own valuable collections. Then Nathaniel Wallich was appointed as the Honorary Curator and the museum under the guidance of Dr. Nathaniel Wallich was established on 2 February 1814.

In 1837, James Prinsep, Secretary of the Society wrote to the government to adopt the proposition of the Society for the formation of a National Museum at the cost of the State.

In 1867, the foundation of the present Indian Museum was laid on the finest site of Chowringhee in front of a small court. From 18114 to 1878 the museum was at the Asiatic Society of Park Street, Kolkata.

The museum which was known firstly as “Asiatic Society Museum” subsequently came to be known as “Imperial Museum”, and later it became known as “Indian Museum”.